Posts Tagged ‘Knowing God’

Easy Exegesis

“Exegesis” is a technical term for interpretation of a text. It’s about serious interpretation–doing your best to get past what you want it to mean, or what you’ve always assumed it means, or what you’ve been told it means, getting through to figure out what the author actually meant. The nutshell definition is “drawing meaning out of a text”.

It’s the opposite of “eisegesis”, which means “reading meaning into a text”. (Calling someone’s interpretation “eisegesis” is basically polite, scholarly trash talk. Any time I read something like, “That’s really more eisegetical than exegetical,” I imagine the target of the comment saying, “Oh no you di-int! Snap!”)

An in-depth exegesis involves looking at the context of the individual verse or passage, at the flow of thought, at the details of the language, at the original audience, at the historical context, and at the other writings of the author (if there are any). That’s the best way to get the most confidence that you’re understanding the fullest meaning of what the text was intended to say.

But…Well, all that makes it sound very complicated, very involved, and much too difficult for anyone who can’t read the Greek text and translate it on the fly. But it’s not. It doesn’t have to be. Don’t get me wrong, some passages really are very challenging, even for the brightest minds with the best resources and the strongest education. But most of the Bible isn’t like that. To get the fullest meaning, it may take practice and a lot of effort–but there are very simple ways to study the Bible that will help you understand quite a lot.

There’s a simple, easy rule of exegesis–one you’ll find yourself using all the time, one that’s widely useful, one that will prevent you from making most of the easy mistakes of interpretation.

The name of this blog, of course, is a reference to 1 Corinthians 13:12, “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.”

The context is 1 Cor. 12-13, on the primacy of love and community in the church. Paul discusses spiritual gifts in chapter 12, how there are many gifts and types of service empowered by God for the common good. (The importance of community was on is mind; he had just chastised the Corinthian church in chapter 11 for the way they profaned the Lord’s Supper with divisions. Instead of being an expression of each believer with Christ and with each other, they ate for their own bellies and they got drunk; those with food ate their own meals while others went hungry.) The whole body is to be joined together so that “If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together.” Each type of service is needed, whether “humble” or “great”. Some are gifted to help others, or to administration, while others are gifted to teach, to heal, to work miracles.

And yet, he says in chapter 13, each gift is a vain and worthless thing if divorced from love. “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.” (v. 1) And even great acts of charity are made meaningless if done without love: “If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned but have not love, I gain nothing.” (v. 3) Love holds a unique in the world; it will never cease, through all eternity. It has the ultimate staying power; it will last to the end, when Christ comes and this fallen world passes away, when every partial, passing, and imperfect good we now know will be consummated and fulfilled in the new heavens and new earth.

Love and community is a taste of heaven. The sacrifice of Christ was not to give people their ticket out of hell; his sacrifice was to create a unified body of serving believers, of disciples and followers. We are made in the image of God, but fallen and twisted; He transforms us to fulfill the image of Christ, showing mercy and love to those who have rejected Him and lived in rebellious selfishness; He saves us by grace through faith, not based on our own efforts to be good. Salvation is freely given to sinners, but we are His workmanship, created for the very purpose of walking in good works, in service and generosity and love. We cannot earn forgiveness, but we can live transformed lives, working out our salvation through His power. We can be one, even as the Son and the Father are one, as Jesus prayed for the disciples in John 17.

The unity and community that we can know is a taste of the nature of God; community is so fundamental that it is part of His eternal being; He is three Persons, eternally knowing and loving one another. The more we understand love, the better we know God.

And so it is that Paul says in 1 Cor 13:12–after saying that love never ends, as some things will–that, “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.” The promise of the gospel is not fundamentally about punishment and reward; eternal life is not a matter of never-ending physical pleasures; it is not about the feasts and 70 virgins that some men die to acquire; it is not about the self-centered bliss that some Christians seek. God so loved the world that those who believe in Him should have eternal life–and Jesus defined eternal life in John 17:3: “And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.”

Eternal life is knowing God. The ultimate death is not to know Him. The heinousness of idolatry–in all its forms, such as greed & materialism–is that we expend our focus and energy on things that do not matter. It is a tragedy to waste a life created in the image of God for service. We can fritter our lives away, devoted to money, to watching television, to sex, to reading fiction, to science, to alcohol, to drugs, to a romantic relationship, to the next exciting thrill, to food, to fame, to fortune. These things may have good in them, but it is a waste of a life to devote to them all our focus, our time, and our energy. They may be part of a life worth living, but they must not be the whole. The greatest commandment is to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind, and to love our neighbors as ourselves.

And so, I come to the purpose of this blog: To know and to show God better, in whatever ways I can. It is to share what I learn, to organize my thoughts, to provide resources, to summarize what I study, and to offer up my own best efforts at understanding God and the world. We are called to service, to fruitful labor, to live for the community; I can point to very little in my past or present life where I have answered this call.

This is one thing I can do. I want this blog to be an expression of my own longing to live out whatever grace God has given me. I’ll post a variety of things–anything I’m thinking about, reading, learning. I’ll post simple quotes from books I’m reading, and sometimes I’ll add my own thoughts. I’ll summarize some nugget of information from a subject I’m studying. I’ll present my own observations, whatever they’re worth. And I’ll link to meaningful, interesting, and helpful entries on other blogs.

I want to do what I can to wipe away grime from the glass through which we see God, to wrestle with confusions and uncertainties, to see more clearly the light of who He is, and to be transformed to reflect that light more brightly. I want to reach the end, and to hear the Father say, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”